D&D 4E Should WotC take a Step Back and Reevaluate 4E?

[Lonely Tylenol]

So then what does zero complaints mean? And why are whatever he thinks aren't perfect in the actual rules ever addressed in his review?

...says the guy who admits to not having read the section of the three-part review in which the author lists his complaints.

 

[KarinsDad]

Well, with all due respect, why didn't you just ask for more reviews, rather than claim it needed to be re-evaluated due to two less than favorable reviews when there are twenty favorable ones. Sometimes, regardless of the sample set, a trend will be apparent to those who do not have the necessity to spin their own agenda.

Well, with all due respect, when did I claim it needed to be re-evaluated? I asked if it should be. And where do you get this "spin their own agenda" stuff? I'm asking for opinions, discussion, and more reviews and that equates to spinning an agenda? Yes, I have a concern about ambivalent (and even negative) reviews, but how does that equate to an agenda?

And where do you get this "twenty favorable ones" from? You have yet to quote them. Do you have an agenda?

 

[Imaro]

...says the guy who admits to not having read the section of the three-part review in which the author lists his complaints.

Went back and read it before I posted...that's how I knew what they were (Not rules issues).

 

[Kwalish Kid]

I'm a middle of the road kind of guy. When looking at data, I throw out the extremes and evaluate the stuff in the middle.

Extremist views are skewed and untrustworthy.

This doesn't really seem to be a good methodology. In general, it promotes reviews of poor quality. If something is truly bad, this methodology rejects the reviews that correctly evaluate the product by rejecting those reports that hold this position. If something is truly good, this methodology similarly rejects correct reviews.

 

[KarinsDad]

"Originally Posted by Massawyrm
The rules? They’re damned near perfect. I have zero complaints. I’m pretty confident most folks will feel the same way once they dive in."

This right here says he believes this game is perfect, and that's hard for me to take at face value. That's not just saying majority is positive, that's saying this game is so revolutionary and perfectly designed that it has no flaws.

In fact the "negatives" he sites have nothing to do with the rules or how the game plays, but instead on how information is distributed and how mini-centric it is. I am sorry but I can't believe that D&D 4e is the "PERFECT" roleplaying game with no room for improvement anywhere in it's rulesset. It just comes off as gushing, especially with the lack of specifics as far as rules and play. YMMV of course

Yup, this is the problem I had with this review.

He did not evaluate the game, he played up all the good points and then said there were no bad points and then said that most people will feel the same way. I'm hard pressed to believe this and yes, it does sound "gushing".

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Went back and read it before I posted...that's how I knew what they were (Not rules issues).

First, this may speak to the strength of the rules. Second, they were a playtest group, and as such, probably had most of their rules issues actually addressed by the development team, leaving them with little to complain about. Third, the author specifically called out at the beginning that he wouldn't be going over any of the details, since he wanted the review to be about play experience, not about a breakdown of the crunch:

What’s about to follow is a three part story. But it’s not about the details. What they changed here or what isn’t there. After this weekend every gaming forum out there will be flooded with details. This is going to be about the experience. What it is like playing Dungeons & Dragons 4E.

 

[Mistwell]

If the review is almost entirely positive, you will dismiss it as not objective.

If the review contains a fair amount of negativity, you will view that as representative and objective.

Hence, you drew your conclusion without the need for any reviews at all. Your selection criteria for reviews to "trust" demanded that there be sufficient negativity in them for you to be able to say that WOTC should reconsider the game.

That seems like a fairly useless process of analysis.

Unless you personally know the people involved, the reviews should be viewed as all equally unbiased or equally biased. "Gushing" is no more or less objective than "Fairly Negative", since you don't know the people involved, their motives, their experiences, the kind of day they were having, the quality of the DM or other players in that game, etc.. Assuming only reviews with an almost equal amount of negative and positive are "objective" seems like a baseless assumption.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Applying the KD approach to some hypothetical playtest reports:

90% of playtesters love everything about the game, particularly the at-will powers and class balance.
5% of playtesters like the at-will powers but dislike the class balance, saying it makes them feel too similar.
5% of playtesters like the class balance but dislike the at-will powers, saying it makes the game feel too superhero-y.

The 90% is totally positive and so must be discounted because it's too extreme. Regarding only the balanced reports, WotC takes steps to remove class balance and at-will powers from the game, despite the fact that 95% of the playtesters liked them.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Here is a negative review.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=8539323

This is the only link I have followed and read while reading this thread. To be fair, most of the complaints in this review are not about the actual 4e rules system, they are about things such as...

1. Too much waiting in line.
2. Bad GM
3. Warlock he played wasn't fun in a dugeon delve
4. Bad guys seemed too powerful

It was definately a negative review of the "experience" but I don't think it reflected much about the actual crunch of the new system.

DS

 

[themilkman]

The extremes of cheerleader and naysayer often tend to be of limited value, limited objectivity, and often have an agenda associated with them.

That's an opinion based off an assumption of bias. Not a scientific assumption, just an assumption. Maybe high or low scores are related to between-subjects variables (person preferences, individual game experiences, etc.) And maybe, by ignoring reviews that don't fit your expectation of ambivalent objectivity, you are ignoring systematic variance that is potentially important.

Or maybe none of that is important. Maybe this is all just about personal decisions and preferences and expectations. Maybe we shouldn't be claiming that there is anything scientific about any of this, because there probably isn't.